EU leaders, after hours of wrangling, were cited as failing to take a decision on Saturday at their year-end summit on where to locate a host of new EU agencies, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said he had decided that the heads of state and government, ending the two-day summit here, should postpone the matter rather than "bargaining endlessly into the night.
An EU source was quoted as saying the discussion had deteriorated into "a sterile and useless argument."
In an emergency measure, however, the 15 agreed that two agencies considered most vital, EFSA and Eurojust, an EU-wide judicial agency, would be temporarily housed in Brussels and The Hague respectively, where they could start up next month.
The EFSA was the most hotly contested prize, with Finland pushing hard for its capital Helsinki. Others vying for the food agency included the northern French city of Lille, Parma in northern Italy and Barcelona in northern Spain.
The European Parliament last Tuesday approved creation of the independent EFSA, but left the politically thorny decision of where it will be based to the EU summit here.The agency is envisioned as a board of scientists and other specialists backed by a staff of 250-300, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Safety David Byrne said after the parliament vote.
It was to be a "risk assessment" arm of the European commission, the EU executive, with its recommendations "transparent, fully public and non-political,"he said.Byrne said the agency would have the same essential goal as the US Food and Drug Administration - "protection of the consumer" but would differ in that it would be independent of any government.